PREPARED TO DIE. READY TO LIVE! Extended Notes

Another amazing day @ a2 Church!

Here's the overview of yesterday's worship experience...

Kicked off with a Scripture reading from Mary Elizabeth featuring passages from Psalm 103, Psalm 100 and Psalm 150 and a challenge to "praise God!"

Set list included:

Dancing Generation by Matt Redman
God Is Love by Hillsong
We The Redeemed by Hillsong
I Will Exalt you by Hillsong

Followed this portion of the worship experience with the message. Extended message notes are included below...

The worship experience culminated with Holy Communion and a time of focusing on Christ, and the following worship response.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (Our own version)
Center by Charlie Hall

There was a beautiful awareness of God's presence upon the worship experience. Absolutely love worshiping with the "a2 fam." God is awesome!

Already pumped about this coming Sunday. We'll be in Philippians 2 and one of the most Christ-centered texts in all the New Testament!

For now, here are the extended notes from yesterday's message.

PREPARED TO DIE. READY TO LIVE!
Philippians: Finding Joy in a Broken World – Part 4
Philippians 1:20-30
September 26, 2010 • Chris Goins

INTRODUCTION: The book of Philippians is one of the “prison” epistles. Paul wrote it to encourage the church at Philippi… This church loved Paul. They were struggling with questions… They couldn’t figure out why the life of Paul had been turned upside down…

They were wondering, “God, why would you take the best player on your team, and sideline him by putting him into prison? Why would you turn him over to an unjust, totally whacked out psycho like Nero? It doesn’t make sense…”

Philippians 1 contains Paul’s response… Paul is attempting to answer the questions racing through the minds of the church at Philippi… And he basically says, “Guys, everything that has happened to me has to be factored through these three important factors:

- the providence of God…
- the progress of the gospel…
- the purpose of my life…"

In Philippians 1:20-30 Paul describes the purpose of his life.

Philippians 1:20-30 (ESV), …it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

Philippians 1:27-30 (ESV),
 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.


The Secret to Life and Death:

1. To Live is Christ.

Philippians 1:21 probably contains the mission statement of Paul the Apostle…

Philippians 1:21 (ESV), For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.


According to John MacArthur, the original Greek doesn’t even doesn’t contain a verb. It literally reads like this, “…to live CHRIST, to die GAIN…”

LIVING = CHRIST
DYING = GAIN

In the mind of Paul, life is Christ… His person… His purpose… His plan… His agenda… His glory… His honor…

J.B. Lightfoot described Paul’s statement like this: “I live only to serve Him, only to commune with Him; I have no concept of life apart from Him…”

This passage describes the magnificent obsession of Paul’s life… Paul’s life was wrapped up in loving Christ, knowing Christ, worshiping Christ, serving Christ, obeying Christ, following Christ, preaching Christ and being devoted to Christ… Paul basically said, “Anything worthy of the name ‘life’ is wrapped up in Christ…” Christ was the CENTER and the CIRCUMFERENCE of Paul’s life…


Dissecting Paul’s statement:

• For to me…

Paul is making a personal statement about a decision He has arrived at… It’s a decision every one of us have to make…

QUESTION: How would you complete this statement?

“For to me to live is __________...”


James Montgomery Boice was right when he described Philippians 1:21 as a “…text that cuts like a surgeon’s scalpel to the heart of Christianity…”

“For to me to live is __________…”


• to live…

The word “live” refers to daily life… Paul is describing the day in, day out, moment-by-moment experience that was His life... Living was Christ…


Paul described the same thing in Romans 12:1. I love the way the Message reads…

Romans 12:1-2 (MSG), So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

Everything filtered everything in his daily through the grid of his relationship with Jesus Christ.

THOUGHT: When we live the reality of Philippians 1:21 we filter every activity, relationship, responsibility, attitude, etc. through our relationship with Jesus Christ.


• Is Christ…

Paul doesn’t beat around the bush… His life was wrapped up in Christ…

THOUGHT: The word “Christ” was the title that marked Jesus as Savior, “anointed one” and Messiah… So when Paul said, “For to me to live is Christ…” He was aligning Himself with the mission and redemptive work of Christ that was accomplished on the cross and through Jesus mighty resurrection…

Paul was defining his life through “the cross of Christ.”

IMPORTANT: Unfortunately, several years ago, Wilbur Rees accurately described the majority of Christians when he wrote the following words with penetrating sarcasm:

"I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please."


2. To die is gain.

Dissecting Paul’s statement:

• and…

The conjunction is crucial… In this passage, it means that Paul is defining his life in two parts: LIVING and DYING…


• to die…

Paul doesn’t shy away from the inevitable reality we will all eventually face… He wrote these words from a prison cell… Death was a real possibility… But he doesn’t allow it to define or overwhelm him…


• is gain…

To “die is gain” because in Paul’s mind, dying means to be “absent from the body and at home with the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 5:8 (NIV), We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him…


Paul understood this important truth: “...if you’re not ready to DIE, you’re not ready to LIVE…”


IMPORTANT: For the believer, this life is as close to hell as you will ever get… In other words, all the pain, suffering, heartache, loss, rejection, you name it, is as close to hell as you will ever get…

Unfortunately, for the person who hasn’t placed their faith in the finished work of Christ… This life is as close to heaven as you will ever get…

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain…”


How death can be gain?

Alexander McClaren desribed it like this:

(1) We lose everything we don’t need…

Pain, loss, rejection, tears, fears, anxiety, sickness, dysfunction, depression, sin, failure, mistakes… You name it! We lose it all!

(2) We keep everything that matters…

We keep our identity… Our fruitfulness or productivity for the kingdom of God… Even our personality…

(3) We gain realities we only dreamed of before…

Heaven… The actual, literal, physical, constant presence of God… Fellowship and relationships like we’ve never experienced them before…

1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT / ESV), Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.